higgs boson discovery = cosmic doomsday?

[bcbm]

http://news.discovery.com/space/higgs-boson-discovery-universe-end-130219.htm

i hate when people anthropomorphize things

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I don't see the relation. How does the discovery of something mean the universe is going to end? It was going to end anyway, we just didn't know about it.

[The Jay]

That was an interesting article. I haven't kept up with science news lately.

[homegrown terror]

don't worry, quinn and arturo will find a chalkboard, jury rig some scrap electronics together and prevent the universe from vaporising itself, succeeding just minutes before the timer hits zero. wade will be their useless cheerleader, rembrandt will exchange pithy one-liners with passersby, and then they slide to the next universe, possibly one where earth is populated by super-intelligent ducks.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I love it when sensationalist journalists can't, or don't care to, tell the line between established science and speculation. The resulting articles are usually a great laugh. But in this case I wasn't really sure what speculation they were talking about until the middle of the article: turns out they were talking about false vacuum proposals that drop out of some hypotheses about quantum gravity.

I guess they're sad that the LHC didn't create a black hole? So now they're trying to bring the doomsday magic back, though they've fumbled with this speculation. The doomsday wouldn't occur for quite some time. :laugh:

At least they're not pushing the "God particle" name and some milquetoast spirituality anymore.

[Philo]

I love it when sensationalist journalists can't, or don't care to, tell the line between established science and speculation. The resulting articles are usually a great laugh. But in this case I wasn't really sure what speculation they were talking about until the middle of the article: turns out they were talking about false vacuum proposals that drop out of some hypotheses about quantum gravity.

I guess they're sad that the LHC didn't create a black hole? So now they're trying to bring the doomsday magic back, though they've fumbled with this speculation. The doomsday wouldn't occur for quite some time. :laugh:

At least they're not pushing the "God particle" name and some milquetoast spirituality anymore.

I remember the original furor over the (speculative) idea of vacuum metastability events. This is basically them trying to sell the same doomsday pop-sci in a slightly new wrapper.

[jackcallidus]

What I find most fascinating about this article was how surprised and disappointed the lead scientist was to have calculated the likelihood of the universe coming to a violent, quick end. The universe erupted into existence out of what-appears-to-be nothingness, a singularity of infinite density and mass into this chaotic, unstable, violent void it is now. Atoms smash together at impossible rates to create nuclear fusion reactions that fuel change and reaction in the universe. And...even after knowing all that, the scientist thought that...perhaps, the universe could sustain this level of violence and instability for eternity? I'm no physics major, but even I could have told him that.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The universe erupted into existence out of what-appears-to-be nothingness, a singularity of infinite density and mass into this chaotic, unstable, violent void it is now.

Hm, that picture is not really a part of standard scientific cosmology. As far as the scientific account is concerned, the present universe expanded rapidly from a hot, dense state, but anything before that state is conjectural. General relativity gives a singularity shortly before that state, but the temperature and the energies involved mean that quantum corrections to the purely classical general relativity are significant - and no one knows what those corrections are.

What we do know is that the universe changes - the scientific account of the universe is dialectical even though most scientists are not aware of that. With that in mind, significant changes aren't as unlikely as people, naively assuming some static, metaphysical model of the universe, sometimes think.

[Philo]

Hm, that picture is not really a part of standard scientific cosmology. As far as the scientific account is concerned, the present universe expanded rapidly from a hot, dense state, but anything before that state is conjectural. General relativity gives a singularity shortly before that state, but the temperature and the energies involved mean that quantum corrections to the purely classical general relativity are significant - and no one knows what those corrections are.

What we do know is that the universe changes - the scientific account of the universe is dialectical even though most scientists are not aware of that. With that in mind, significant changes aren't as unlikely as people, naively assuming some static, metaphysical model of the universe, sometimes think.

In what way is the "scientific account of the universe" dialectical? :confused:

That aside though, I'd like to expand on the physics for the benefit of other readers (I'm not disagreeing). What Semendyaev is basically saying is that classical general relativity gives you a singularity at the time t=0*. If you take classical general relativity and try to "extrapolate" backwards to t=0, you get a situation where the universe supposedly has infinite density, infinite temperature, and most crucially, infinite curvature.

They key is that you get infinites which are generally covariant, which basically means that you can't eliminate them just by changing your coordinate system, which you can with most infinities that you encounter in general relativity (the metric going to infinity is relatively common). Now, what's important is that all this is a consequence of classical general relativity. I know of few leading theoretical physicists who claim said state actually obtained. As far as I'm concerned, in line with Semendyaev's point, this is more an indication that something is "wrong" with general relativity, or more precisely that it's badly in need of the corrections from a theory of quantum gravity that we know is coming in some form or another.

*Which in this context means that all time-like geodisics have no extension into the past. In "plain" language, time-like geodisics are vectors in spacetime which generalize the notion of "straight" to curved spaces, parallel transport their own tangent vector, and whose tangent maintains a constant magnitude. You can read about parallel transport in many places, but the short version is that it "preserves" certain important geometrical information while moving along a smooth curve on a manifold.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

In what way is the "scientific account of the universe" dialectical?

It implies that material phenomena are multifaceted, that they posses various contradictory internal tendencies, that as a consequence they are always in development, that they are interrelated, that quantitative changes on one level of description can lead to qualitative changes on higher levels etc. Modern science fulfills almost every criterion in Lenin's Conspectus - I am somewhat suspicious of the desire for "endless" discovery of new facets and relations.

[Orange Juche]

It's okay. The Doctor will save us.

[homegrown terror]

It's okay. The Doctor will save us.

i already made the joke, only i used a Sliders reference instead of Dr. Who.

[Le Socialiste]

A newfound particle discovered at the world's largest atom smasher last year is, indeed, the Higgs boson, the particle thought to explain how other particles get their mass, scientists reported today (March 14) at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy.

Physicists announced on July 4, 2012, that, with more than 99 percent certainty, they had found a new elementary particle weighing about 126 times the mass of the proton that was likely the long-sought Higgs boson. The Higgs is sometimes referred to as the "God particle," to the chagrin of many scientists, who prefer its official name.

But the two experiments, CMS and ATLAS, hadn't collected enough data to say the particle was, for sure, the Higgs boson, the last undiscovered piece of the puzzle predicted by the Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.
Now, after collecting two and a half times more data inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — where protons zip at near light-speed around the 17-mile-long (27 kilometer) underground ring beneath Switzerland and France — physicists say the particle is the Higgs.

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela in a statement.

Dave Charlton, ATLAS spokesperson agreed, the new results "point to the new particle having the spin-parity of a Higgs boson as in the Standard Model," referring to a quantum property of elementary particles.

To confirm the particle as the Higgs boson, physicists needed to collect tons of data that would reveal its quantum properties as well as how it interacted with other particles. For instance, a Higgs particle should have no spin and its parity, or the measure of how its mirror image behaves, should be positive, both of which were supported by data from the ATLAS and CMS experiments.

Even so, the scientists are not sure whether this Higgs boson is the one predicted by the Standard Model or perhaps the lightest of several bosons predicted to exist by other theories.

Seeing how this particle decays into other particles could let physicists know whether this Higgs is the "plain vanilla" Standard Model Higgs. Detecting a Higgs boson is rare, with just one observed for every 1 trillion proton-proton collisions. As such, the LHC physicists say they need much more data to understand all of the ways in which the Higgs decays.

From what is known about the particle now, physicists have said the Higgs boson may spell the universe's doom in the very far future. That's because the mass of the Higgs boson is a critical part of a calculation that portends the future of space and time. Its mass of 126 times the mass of the proton is just about what would be needed to create a fundamentally unstable universe that would lead to a cataclysm billions of years from now.

"This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there'll be a catastrophe," Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., said last month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"It may be the universe we live in is inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out," added Lykken, a collaborator on the CMS experiment.

http://news.yahoo.com/confirmed-newfound-particle-higgs-130317830.html

[Thirsty Crow]

It implies that material phenomena are multifaceted,
Does this simple fact necessitate the mysticism of the supposed three "laws" of development of any damn thing and process that exists?

t
hat they posses various contradictory internal tendencies,I'm afraid not. That would be your metaphysical imposition - an interpretation of a specific kind - and not something borne out by evidence and scientific theory.


that as a consequence they are always in development, that they are interrelated, See above.


that quantitative changes on one level of description can lead to qualitative changes on higher levels etc.Again, see above. Though, one might wonder what made you change your mind on quantity -> quality, in that as a dialectical law, it is no matter of "can lead to" but "lead to - everywhere and any time".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I had forgotten about this thread. Odd.


Does this simple fact necessitate the mysticism of the supposed three "laws" of development of any damn thing and process that exists?

The "three laws" are an oversimplification and I am not aware of anyone that would seriously defend them as anything but teaching aids. Lenin provides a good overview of the Hegelian dialectics in his conspectus (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/summary.htm) - the transition to a materialist dialects corresponds to a transition from a contradiction in concepts to contradictory tendencies in the development of material phenomena.


I'm afraid not. That would be your metaphysical imposition - an interpretation of a specific kind - and not something borne out by evidence and scientific theory.

Every theory involves interpretative work - intellectual labour that actively engages with the "brute facts" that bourgeois philosophers often fetishise.


See above.

I might say the same thing. But all you need to do to carry the point is provide an example of one phenomenon that does not develop in a dialectical manner - that behaves like the eternal, static idealisations of bourgeois metaphysics.


Again, see above. Though, one might wonder what made you change your mind on quantity -> quality, in that as a dialectical law, it is no matter of "can lead to" but "lead to - everywhere and any time".

No one in their right mind thinks that every quantitative change leads to qualitative changes; that would collapse the distinction between them. Qualitative changes occur when a certain amount of quantitative change has accumulated.